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Tournament Fighting will begin in a few chapters

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Chapter 40: Storytime! Part 1

I continued to stroke their heads absentmindedly until they woke up. They seemed happy to have someone stroke them and I was content just to keep them happy.

When both of them had fully woke up and Foxy had stretched out like a cat on the bed like a cat. I decided to finally talk,

“Thanks Foxy and Emi for helping me out. It has been a long time since I’ve had people I could truly trust like you guys and I’m forever in your debts for helping me out. Foxy thank you for healing me, I know it must have been hard for you to reveal yourself completely without hiding anything back. Thanks. And Emi thank you for caring so much for me, I know you felt helpless and I’m sorry for that. I should have been more careful I apologize for that.”

Both Emi and Foxy nodded obviously they had been worried about me if I would recover fully especially after such a long gash. It was Foxy who finally broke the silence with a question, “How did you get such a large slash down your body?”

“I was about to be mugged by some bandits who I underestimated their numbers. I should have been more careful, I tried to rely too much on the powers of these swords.”

“Yeah I was wondering about that, why do your swords have powers?” Foxy asked.

Emi answered in my stead, “We discovered these swords at the end of a dungeon through a lot set of events. It seems my swords one of my swords can generate fire while the other can generate ice. Clover’s have something similar.”

I decided to come clean, just as Foxy had come clean about her powers, “Yeah mine have some weird powers that are quite hard to control. One of them can take the power of things around me and one can use energy to throw protection over things. Those are the main powers but I still haven’t discovered all their uses. I seem to find different quirks and uses of them as I use them more. They are rather dangerous but I know I need to master them if I want to get stronger.”

Foxy’s eyes expanded, surprised at this revelation which obviously were rather alien in this world. I mean seriously swords that have powers? I’d never heard of swords that had supernatural powers like these ones… It was a rather predictable reaction for someone in her position to have.

“Who are you people?”

“Just two people who wanted to join the sword fighting tournament.” I said simply.

“No really though?”

“Seriously Foxy.” Emi said reassuring her.

“We just had some errr unfortunate or perhaps fortunate events happen to us.”

“What of?”

“I guess it’s time to come clear for all of us. After all we’re a party. We’ll tell you our story and you’ll tell us a bit about yourself.” Perhaps this could be the time that we learn a bit about her past.

“…Alright then…” Foxy hesitated but agreed to it.

“It began in our village which is a day’s trip from here.” I started.

“We aren’t able to go back because of the winter has completely blocked the path between the two villages.” Emi clarified probably predicting what question Foxy would ask.

“Yes, anyway back to our story. I met Emi while I was looking to learn Water Style with her sister Lisa. We fought-”

“And I completely whooped his ass.” Emi patted my head like a parent strokes the head of a child.

“Yes but we still trained together and by the end Emi was learning Rock Style and I was learning to be able to fight with Water style.”

“So both of you are able to use both styles well?” Foxy obviously curious about our fighting styles.

“Yeah but it seems that after all this fighting real life monsters has sort of naturally mixed the two styles together. I seem to have put some parts of Rock Style in my Water Style and Clover seems to have done the other way.” Emi answered trying to clarify why our styles are different from the vanilla Water and Rock Style.”

“Yes its been a rather steep learning curve to learn to fight real life monsters. It’s about surviving rather than just keeping the strict form of either Rock or Water. Anyway after a couple of years after that we got more of the hang of it and set of for this tournament. The day we left it was raining very heavily and Emi over here decided we should take a shortcut through the forest.” I playfully punched Emi a little ribbing her a bit for our rather long detour.

Emi looked a little embarrassed as she had sent us through a rather crazy adventure on an otherwise potentially easy and straightforward trip.

“Anyway as we were riding our horses” I continued the story, “We came across a cliff and Emi’s horse started to lose footing on the hill due to the rain making the forest floor unsteady. Her horse tipped over and she fell careening down the hill. I jumped from my horse to try and save her and we both fell into this cave.”

“I’ll continue the story Clover, This cave we found out was called the Cave of Dark and Light,” Emi took over as I had told the majority of the beginning. “This cave wasn’t like any other cave I heard of before or since. It wasn’t filled with monsters but puzzles. Riddles that didn’t make sense to me but to Clover they seemed like bread and butter.”

“Don’t sell your self short you helped me plenty, without her I wouldn’t have been able to finish the cave,” I put a supporting hand on Emi to comfort her a bit, “She gave me a lot of the inspiration for the first few and support for the final riddle. I wouldn’t have been able to do the riddles without her.”

“Thanks Clover.” She seemed kind of worried remembering the events of the last riddle, “The first few riddles were simple ones that you just needed to figure out the right answer from the clues given but the last one had just a few words “Man’s Greatest Weakness” was all it said. There it seemed Clover was assaulted by something and he looked so helpless. At first it didn’t seem it would stop and he kept getting paler and but I managed to stop the nightmare by comforting him and he seemed to get better. At the end of the ordeal he simply spoke a word and the cave was finished.”

“What was the word?” Foxy inquired probably still a little worried about me.

“Fear.” I replied still a little pale from remembering the events. It was the scariest thing we ever did.

Emi continued the story, “There we found the rewards and got our swords there and a mysterious door appeared that allowed us to be transported to this town. We lost all our money paying the penalty for losing the horses and that’s where we found you in the pub. That’s our story.”

We both looked expectantly at Foxy waiting to see how she would react.

“I guess it’s time for you to learn a bit about me.”

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